Sports’ #1 Playing Field is…..

What is the #1 Playing Field in Sports circa 2013? Yankee Stadium?? Cameron Indoor?? Fenway?? MSG?? TheRoseBowl?? TheSuperDome?? AugustaNational?? Nope to all the above and to any other bricks, mortar, turf and/or hardwood you might suggest. ….. The #1 Playing Field in Sports today is right in front of you – your computer monitor and “the Internet”.

Sure, all those traditional “real world” venues are still there and they still host competitive contests between flesh&blood combatants. But those mundane “games” are superfluous to what really boils the blood of America’s sporting public – The Internet Sturm and Drang….. the endless regurgitation of the insignificant….. the elevation of the “who cares” to “OH MY GAWD” headlines. The transforming of pure 100% BS Wild-Ass-Rumors into three weeks of on-going storylines.

Play the silly games and have a jumbotron declare who “won” then get the heck outta the way and let the fans and “the media” pound the whole kit and the kaboodle into kitty litter.

• Tim Tebow didn’t play this Sunday. Will he play next Sunday?
• Lakers to cut Pau Gasol….. bringing back Vlade Divac.
• Should RGIII name his son RGIV?
• AJ McCarron Dumping Katherine Webb for Taylor Swift?
• Could Bama beat Lombardi’s Packers?
• OU and aTm alums agree to pay Mack Brown’s salary for next ten years.
• Dickie Baddour interviews for Panther GM?
• Saban To The Browns….. Butch To Bama!!
• Adrian Peterson donates a knee to RGIII.
• Jon Gruden tapped as next Secty of State.
• Why aren’t there any black punters?
• Is Skip Bayless A Transvestite?
• Roy asks Coach K to recommend a good back surgeon…..
• Is ‘Johnny Football’ his Real Name? Then who are the Manziels?
• Vote Here for Frau Yow to replace Swofford as ACC Czar.
• Do Buffalos Really Have Wings?

And, of course, there are some REALLY silly discussions going on out there too.

Shovel enough crap on a molehill and it becomes a mountain. Molehill stories now dominate “sports journalism”. Similar non-stories, of course, dominate what now passes for “real news” (cough, cough, wink, wink).

There are two basic reasons for all this.

(1) The 24/7 cycle for both sports and real news has an inexhaustible appetite and must be fed. If ya can’t come up with a real story then just keep rehashing and rehashing the silly crap ad infinitum. To a ESPN producer there is no such thing as “too many Tebow stories”.

(2) The people researching and reporting this crap ain’t exactly the best & the brightest by any means. Newspapers, in particular, are now staffed by glorified interns operating on nickel and dime budgets. The “anonymous sources” for most of their “breaking stories” are bug-eyed pinheads in soiled underwear with Erin Andrews posters taped to their ceilings. Their editors order them to surf the fan boards “just in case”, so that’s how sports reporters spend their day.

It’s “Sports”. There is AT MOST about an hour’s worth of legitimate news each day about “sports” – Rocky Colavito has been traded for Harvey Kuenn….. Bo Rein’s plane is missing….. etc etc etc. But 24 hours of sports news time to fill.

It is an injustice to label your local newspaper or network affiliate as “tabloid journalism”. The supermarket tabloids (National Enquirer et al) were always tongue-in-cheek spoofs and never took themselves seriously. Not so the so-called “real news” nabobs. These self-righteous goobers take themselves VERY seriously despite getting their material and “facts” straight out of the cyber gutter.

An Elvis Sighting or Alien Baby story is a fun read. The 10,000th Tebow said” or “Kardashian hooked-up with” story is just boring.

The ultimate irony to this silliness is that it is an endless cycle. Some Jimmy Olson at “the newspaper” or TV station sees an absurd over-the-top BS comment on a partisan fan-site. He takes that absurdity and makes it “a story”. The pinheaded loonies on the fan-site read the story in “real media” and assume “it must be true” when it was never anything but fan-site flatulence recycled back to them.

Otherwise reasonable humans who don’t visit the fan-sites read/hear it; never knowing it all began in the twisted mind of a nitwit board monkey. Coaches, administrators and players are then badgered for days on end to disapprove the original absurdum.

A game might last 2-3 hours but chasing this rumor smoke never ends….. because there never was any “there” there to begin with. Denying an imaginary story will always come off as “sweeping it under the rug”….. “a cover-up”. (No, I’m not talking about a certain local unpleasantess. That absolutely DOES have a basis in fact albeit it has been over-glamorized, over-denied and reduced to an eternal tug-o-war between rabid teams of “birthers” vs BigFoot sighters.)

My favorite non-storylines this week are…… (1) “RGIII” or “RGIII’s knee” and (2) “AJ McCarron’s girlfriend”. Those almost make me pine for a Tebow update.

Can you imagine Grantland Rice, Jim Murray, or Furman Bisher calling for Brent Musberger’s firing (and public castration) for saying “…… Herbie, that sure is a pretty girl.”